Yellowstone’s Dutton Ranch Spin-Off Has A Big Rip And Beth Problem It Needs To Address
Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and her husband, Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), are set to move to center stage as they head their own spin-off, “Dutton Ranch.” But there’s one big problem with that choice; the two of them have never had to face a single consequence in their lives. Sure, they’re both fallible people — and Beth has gotten into violent scrapes with other women and come out on the losing end on “Yellowstone.” But this is a show about two murderers who are used to disposing of bodies in a no man’s land waste dump over the border in Wyoming called the train station. They’ve always been able to behave violently and outrageously and never had to deal with any bad karma as a result.
The last person Beth killed was her adopted brother, Jamie (Wes Bentley). That ought to have more emotional weight in the narrative, but Beth — who had been struggling with a lot of long-held rage against her sibling since he allowed a clinic on the rez to sterilize her after assisting her with an abortion — gets on with life after taking a celebratory rest and drink.
Rip has killed dozens more men: some for Beth’s father, John (Kevin Costner), and some simply for interfering with ranch business. Neither of them have grown or learned anything from these experiences, even as the violence has taken its toll on their clan and the Dutton family tree has been pruned down to near nothingness. They’ve never had to go to prison, never been brought up on charges, never even suffered major personal losses. Here’s why all of that needs to change if “Dutton Ranch” is going to be successful.
Who wants to watch a show where there are no rules for the main characters?
The television landscape is laden with characters who have nonexistent or grey-toned morality, but none of them are like Beth and Rip, who are portrayed as steeple-chasing, cattle-rearing superheroes. Walter White (Bryan Cranson) from “Breaking Bad” is a somewhat more evil comparison point, and even he suffers from recurrent terminal cancer, loses the respect of his family and friends, and is hunted down and killed during the last hours of his life. He might get in a little bit of redemption before passing — making sure that his family has cash before he dies, and ensuring the freedom of his partner, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). But he ends his life alone, bleeding out next to the only thing he loves: a large barrel of homebrewed drugs. He does it with a self-satisfied smile on his face, but who’s really won?
Plenty of other heroes in comparable dramas have faced similar, mixed consequences, yet such punishment has eluded Beth and Rip. While the threat of the law coming down on them has always lingered over the Dutton family’s operations, their problems are disposed of via burned vehicles, scorched corpses, and plenty of bald-faced lies. One might point to “Yellowstone” and John’s seemingly-invincible ways, but John was afforded depth that has eluded Beth and Rip. He was allowed to be cruel and kind, and he ultimately paid for his hubris with his life.
Beth and Rip’s cartoonish invulnerability needs to go
Now that they’re heading their own show, Beth and Rip desperately need to face some sort of serious consequences for their behavior. “Dutton Ranch” is wholly centered on them, and asking viewers to watch them karma-Houdini their way out of situation after situation would be silly.
But that doesn’t mean the characters have to be nicer — just deeper. Beth definitely doesn’t need to be a goody-goody like her brother Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) to be the center of a show. But she can’t run around Texas setting the world on fire the way she did when she ruled Montana with the Dutton name behind her. In a world where Beth has no one in her back pocket and the Dutton name is as dead as her father, she ought to be struggling with more, dealing with more, and even going through the court system.
Unless audiences want to insert themselves into Beth’s high heels and pretend they’re invulnerable themselves, there’s no lasting appeal for either her or Rip as permanent series leads. They need to be allowed to express emotions deeper than lust, rage, and cold satisfaction. The warmth between them that pops up whenever they dance together or hang out on their porch has always been a nice change of pace, providing Beth with some of her best moments on “Yellowstone.” The spin-off should encourage these moments if it wants to survive — without forcing the characters to soften entirely or lose their edges.
